The Middle Man - or, A Manual Of Treason

November 26, 2014 11:53 AM

Hindu ki bas eik khasusiat: Baghl mein churi, moen par Ram Ram. My Urdu, at the time, was idiomatically sub-par. I had recently moved from Doha, Qatar, to General Zia ul Haq’s Lahore and his 9th grade Social Sciences textbook was nearly incomprehensible. The teacher read the line with a sneer. I intuited from his body language, and from the twitter that ran through the class, that this was a derisive remark, but I couldn’t quite follow: If someone had just been stabbed in the side with a knife wouldn’t he be crying to the gods in pain? What’s the shame here? I went home and asked my mother. She explained the idiom: Baghl mein churi does not mean a knife in the side but a knife concealed in the armpit of a garment. Moen pay Ram Ram is not a gesture towards pious invocation (like my grandmother’s recitation of Ya Rahman Ya Rahim)—it is meant to stand as insincere. The Hindu has only one characteristic: He conceals a knife, ready to strike, even as his lips intone Ram. I remember wanting to see or speak to a Hindu, to corroborate or defy this assessment, but Lahore in the mid-1980s held only bare traces—a place name, the legends of a boarded-up building, a strange spiral shape buried in the horizon—of its Hindu past. The city of Madho Lal or Chandarbhan had disappeared even from memories. Our teacher was a history enthusiast and he quickly warmed up to my hesitant question: Sir, why are Hindus never to be trusted?

Also in Urdu [PDF]. Manan Ahmed writes at Chapati Mystery

Chapati Mystery, previously

posted by the man of twists and turns (3 comments total)

Oh wow, this looks fascinating, thanks for sharing.
posted by Fizz at 12:02 PM on November 26, 2014

Oh man, this was great and I only wish that it was longer because it's fascinating!
posted by klangklangston at 12:10 PM on November 26, 2014

Interesting stuff; I love stories that complicate propagandistic/nationalist simplifications of history. I just wish the essay had gone into how it was that Hotchand got singled out as the personification of (imagined) treachery. Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 3:02 PM on November 26, 2014 [1 favorite]